The newest addition to our Influential Video Game Designers series explores the work of Todd Howard, executive producer at Bethesda Studios, known for how he consistently pushes the boundaries of open-world gaming and player agency.Howard's games create worlds in which players can design their own characters and tell their own stories. While many games tell the story of the game's main character, Todd Howard's worldbuilding approach to game design focuses more on telling the story ...

Phillip "Stonewall" Jackson a former college football star has seen his life become a series of disappointments. First, football was taken away by an injury and then his family died in a mysterious car wreck. Unable to withstand the memories, he runs.On the road his dead wife's GPS fixates on a particular location. In an attempt to reset the machine Stonewall follows the direction, and finds himself in the parking lot of a biker bar. Happenstance introduces him to the mother of a k...

Once upon a time, my life was good.I had a family, I had a girlfriend, and hopes for the future. That was long ago, but I remember it. A hazy dream of what could have been. That's gone now. I lost it all. Life f--ked me over, and now I'm scared of my own damn shadow.I'm training to be a tattoo artist, but I bet I'm not good enough. I have a roof over my head, but every morning I'm scared shitless that I'll find myself on the street again - or worse, back in...

In celebration of 90 years of DC comes a thrilling and immersive audio production adapting super fan and writer Mark Waid’s comprehensive New History of the DC Universe, turning back time to the very beginning of it all.Narrated by Barry Allen/The Flash, this exciting audio adaptation of the 2025 four-issue comic book series by legendary creators Mark Waid, Jerry Ordway, Todd Nauck, and many more of DC’s greatest artists, traces the storied history of the DC Univer...

The first major biography of one of Old Hollywood's greatest directors.Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Howard Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks's greatest creation may have been ...

From their location in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, the Weisfelds’ lab has reached out for thirty years to couples in long-term partnerships around the world. In living rooms in Detroit, London, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond, couples of all types and ages have shared their perspectives into adult romantic relationships. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View is a distillation of these findings, which have appeared in dozens of book chapters, journal articles, ...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Eighteen twenty-five dash eighteen sixty-eight: a mans life summed up on a gravestone, as though his birth and death are the only cardinal facts of his existence. Certainly, a Mozart concerto is much more than the first and the last notes or even the total number of notes contained in the work. It is the manner in which Mozart arranged those notes, the themes they demonstrate, and the sentiments they elicit that give the composition its beauty and importance. In the same sense, the dash on...

From the Hugo Award-winning hosts of the Writing Excuses writing advice show comes a collection of all-new stories of the fantastic, with beautiful illustrations and a behind-the-scenes look at each story's creation.Brandon Sanderson's “Sixth of the Dusk,” set in his Cosmere universe shared by the Mistborn books and the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, showcases a society on the brink of technological change. On the deadly island of Patji, where predators can sense...

'The Light Has Been Broken: 560+ Macabre Classics, Supernatural Mysteries & Dark Tales' showcases a vast panorama of horror and supernatural literature, featuring works by prominent figures ranging from Mary Shelley to H.P. Lovecraft. This collection presents an expansive exploration of gothic terror, psychological unease, and eerie mysteries, encapsulating a rich diversity of literary styles from the grimly poetic to the starkly suspenseful. The anthology not only reinforces the tradition...

The Power of Darkness: 560+ Supernatural Thrillers, Macabre Tales & Eerie Mysteries is an expansive anthology that showcases a rich tapestry of tales from the realm of the eerie and the uncanny. This vast collection captures the essence of gothic, horrific, and supernatural storytelling, weaving a diverse range of literary styles from the pens of some of the most renowned authors in the genre. The spectrum of narratives includes psychological thrillers, ghostly hauntings, and sinister myst...

In the trenches of World War I, amidst the deafening roar of artillery and the suffocating stench of death, a young American poet named Alan Seeger pens a haunting sonnet that will forever immortalize his name. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" is a poignant and evocative masterpiece that captures the raw emotions of a soldier facing his own mortality. As the battle rages around him, Seeger contemplates the inevitability of death and the bittersweet beauty of sacrifice. His words, etched in...